Gerd Leonhard’s thoughts, finds and other comments on the future of ethics in a digital world

“We will need new practitioners to tame and manage the emerging data-driven digital world, as well as those to regulate and govern them. Rather than just tweaking existing disciplines, we need to develop a new set of critical questions and perspectives. Working out how to navigate our humanity in the context of this data-driven digital world requires conversations across the disciplines. In the university sector, we need to rethink how we fund, support and reward research, and researchers. At a funding level, our privileging of Stem at the expense of the rest of the disciplines is short-sighted at best, and detrimental at worst.

Invest in the human-scale conversation

We need to invest in hard conversations that tackle the ethics, morality and underlying cultural philosophy of these new digital technologies in Australian lives. Do we need an institute or a consortium or a governmental thinktank? I am not sure, but I think it would be a good start. We have a great deal of concern about our future and the role of technology in it. We have a responsibility to tell more nuanced, and yes, more complicated stories – governments, NGOs, industry, news media, every one of us. We also have a responsibility to ask better questions ourselves. We should be educated stakeholders in our own future; and this requires work and willingness to get past the easy seduction of killer robots.”

Digital Ethics by Futurist Gerd Leonhard

Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and Humanist, Author, Keynote Speaker, CEO The Futures Agency, Zurich / Switzerland
Gerd Leonhard is a hunter and gatherer of human values from the future. From culture and society to commerce and technology, Gerd brings back the news from the future so business and society leaders can make better choices right now. In his latest book, Technology vs Humanity, Gerd explores the key ethical and social questions which urgently require an answer before we increasingly abdicate our very humanity. For organizations in the grip of disruption, Gerd supplies visionary insights and concentrated wisdom that informs key decisions makers today. A musician by origin, Gerd Leonhard has now redefined the vocation of futurist as a new humanist.
Gerd was listed as one of the top 100 influencers in technology by Wired magazine (2015).